Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters quiet shooting w/o silencers?

That picture is oddly disturbing in an undetermined, somewhat sodomous way. Thank goodness this is a still picture and not a video of the artillery piece moving forward, backing up, moving forward, backing up...

Aw, geez, Jim, you've just guaranteed someone is going to make that one of those annoying moving avatars. Eeew. Dutch.

You are very distrubed and require professional help.

This idea and all the suggestions about how to make baffles are cute but won't work with supersonic bullets, those which exceed about 1120 feet per second.

The reason is that most of the noise comes from the sonic boom created by the bullet, not from the explosion of the powder going off. The noise is a loud crack, the loudness depending on velocity and mass.

If you don't believe this, go down range 200 yards or so and have someone fire rifles over your head (while standing behind a hill, of course). You'll hear the loud crack and, a short time later, hear the gun going off, a much more muted sound at that distance.

You can silence the report as heard by guys standing behind the firing line, but you can't silence the report heard by your neighbors down range or cross range unless you reduce the velocity to 1120 or so.

That's also defined as a silencer under the NFA.

hehe......... what a great convo

Nooooooooooo, most of the noise from the discharge of a firearm is the result of the gases being expelled from the muzzle. The sonic crack is not anywhere near as load as the muzzle report. Maybe you should actually spend some time using a suppressor before making those comments.

I've got a silencer on my .300 WM. And yes, you can hear the sonic crack, but you can't hear it as far away as you can the muzzle blast. The muzzle blast is a LOT quieter.

Someone (maybe you) mentioned having someone shoot above your head and hearing the crack. Sure does, they used to teach ranging in the Army by counting the seconds between the "crack" of the bullet and the "boom" of the muzzle blast.

But the sound is most audible directly above your head, or close by. The crack is like a whip cracking, it loses its sound-carrying ability fairly soon. A jet plane breaking the sound barrier, being huge by comparison, can be heard a lot farther off.

Here is how they do it in a little village in Switzerland. The range is on the edge of town and they shoot 7.5mm
whelennut

Here is a shot of me (white Creedmoor leather coat) competing at another range in Switzerland. This one has a different style, a rectangular tube.
Notice that there is a monitor that shows each shot so that you don't have to go downrange to see the target and no target pullers are required to be in the pits either! Nice!
whelennut

I see those are all right handed silencers. Geez, we southpaws can't get a break...

A friend deals with this situation by using a 218 Bee or 22 Hornet loaded to just subsonic levels. It is surprisingly effective and has accounted for 50 or more legally shot Deer.

He'd be just as well off shooting a .22 LR with subsonic loads. However, in my state you can't hunt with a silencer.

It really is a shame that such a social stigma surrounds silencers (alliteration unintended).

They'd reduce hearing loss, we might be able to get more ground opened or re-opened to shooting, some shooting ranges wouldn't have to install those stupid sound baffles - not individual ones but big range wide sound baffles.

Lots of good things about them, but they are seen by politicians and the general public as tools strictly for gangsters or assasins.

They were originally roped in with the rest of the NFA weapons due to a fear of poaching. It's only been in the last 50 years or so that the gangster element has been attached via Hollywood film and television plot lines.

At any rate, they're still legal in 35 states and can be legally fabricated at home with the possession of an approved BATFE Form 1. (I actually use one in city limits to smoke prairie dogs and other pests.)

[quote=Tod]Anything that attaches to the muzzle of a firearms and is intended to reduce the report is a silencer (even if it doesn't work as intended). Be careful.

I've made a couple of 'baffle stands' for testing loads where the neighbors might complain Something as simple as a 55gal drom with a 12 inch hole cut in both ends works. Lining the inside with egg carton foam works really well. You can add plywood baffles and get the sound down to an amazing level. The more you can expand and cool the propellant gasses in a controlled environment, the better.

It doesn't just work for firearms.

[/quote

Whoa!!! Now that's my kind of silencer!

I have a gunsmith friend who set up a series of used freight containers on his 10-acre place for a semi-indoor test range. It's on the outskirts of a small town and he shoots out of a window at the the rear of his shop. The "silencer" is a series of used tires set up in about a 12-foot row. He has had a few flash-offs from accumulated powder, but no fires. I believe he has now drilled a hole in the bottom of each tire where he can flush out the small amount of unburned power now and then.

I did experience a flash-off once when shooting on his range. It was startling but caused no harm.

My friend shoots rifles up to .458 Lott inside this arrangement with no complaints from the neighbors, and some are within 300 yards. I dunno if the series of cargo containers helps or not. The small gaps between them aren't filled!

There is a public range in VA that use a goodly length of tires to calm things down. The report is a really wierd but still very loud hollow sound. And the tires collect rainwater. This means there may be some mosquitos about.

I suspect the principal purpose is to restrict shooting postions and eliminate "blue sky" shots. They do do that.

Silencers are legal here in New Zealand - and they really work. My son is a convert....this one is simple a push on model that slips over the end of the barrel

They are also legal in several other countries, such as South Africa, partly as a courtesy to settled areas. Paranoia is the only reason they're not legal in the USA.